


It Had to be You

by Ksco



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Death, Ficlet, Grief/Mourning, Mass Effect 3, Mention of blood, Post-Mass Effect 3, Sacrifice, Seashells, Shepard/Kaidan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29870544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ksco/pseuds/Ksco
Summary: Shepard reflects on Mordin's death after the war.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	It Had to be You

**Author's Note:**

> Didn't know Mass Effect would break me so much, but here we are.

It’s quiet now, this space in her mind that is free from the Reapers, free from the responsibility of saving the world one sacrifice at a time. 

They’d settled in Iceland afterward, partially because it was untouched by the war, but mostly because they had both needed the space to breathe, to feel their hearts beating in the cool, crisp air without the pressure of the galaxy leaning on them.

She isn’t quite sure that she likes it, but she’s grown used to it now. 

It gives her time, which is both a blessing and a curse. 

The ocean laps at the shore as she walks. Gentle, always so gentle. Kaidan says it’s soothing, that it calms his nightmares to hear it outside their window at night, but to her, gentleness is a reminder of all that she’s lost. 

If she had been bolder, faster, firmer, would she have--

Something crunches under her foot. 

She regrets shifting to see what it is almost immediately. 

A seashell.

  
  
  


_“You planning to stick around after this is over?”_

_She had asked the question passively, focused on measuring out the liquid that Mordin had handed her and only half listening as he rattled off the list of impossible things he either had or would accomplish, so it startled her when his answer turned wistful._

_“Might go somewhere sunny. Sit on beach, look at ocean, collect seashells.”_

_Shepard grinned, unable to stop the laugh that escaped her at the thought of the salarian camped out on the beach, a sun hat perched crookedly on his head and a thick swatch of sunscreen swiped across his nose._

_She knew Mordin, heck,_ Mordin _knew Mordin, and they both knew that he’d never sit still long enough for that. His mind would run a mile a minute and the second something captured his curiosity, he’d be off._

_“Seashells, Mordin?” She laughed. “You’d go crazy inside an hour.”_

_His response was almost imperceptible, but she’d spent enough time down in his lab to read the humor behind his exaggerated pause._

_“Might run tests on the seashells,” he said finally._

_"Might?" Eve asked dryly from her cot._

_Shepard bit her lip, suppressing her smile as she handed the beaker back to Mordin and they moved on._

  
  
  


Pain brings her back to the present. Slowly, she uncurls her fist to find the broken pieces of the seashell in her hand. It’s tainted now, the pristine white that it was moments ago stained crimson from where the sharp edges had cut into her palm.

It’s not the first time she’s been pulled into her memories and forgotten herself as they played out in front of her. 

Usually she’s able to ignore it, but it’s been getting harder. 

Some deaths linger. 

Her eyes drop to the sand as she blinks rapidly, but that’s a mistake. The beach here is black, the same hue as the ashes that fell from the sky that fateful day in Tuchanka. 

The day she let Mordin step onto that damned elevator and seal his fate. 

Without thinking, she turns her hand as if to catch the ashes again. 

She needs this, needs to remember the steep cost of life. That every time she steps outside and feels the sting of her own humanity as the wind whips sharp against her bare skin, she has friends that will never know that again. 

She turns then, closing her fingers around the fragments of the shell as she heads back up the coast. Back to shelter, to Kaidan. 

Mordin will never see this seashell, but she will. 

She’ll carry the scars from it, long after they fade into slivers naked to the human eye, and remember him. 

His intelligence, his bravery, his sacrifice.

But, most of all, his life.


End file.
